Enhance your book club
See the movie There Will Be Blood, starring Daniel Day Lewis. It is based loosely on Upton Sinclair’s book, Oil!. It is about a turn-of-the-century prospector in the early years of the oil business.
Read Grapes of Wrath–the story of the Joad family leaving Oklahoma after the “Dust Bowl” to go to California, where prospects are rumored to be better.
Another movie comes to mind–Fargo, starring William H. Macy and Francis McDormand. It is set in Fargo, Minnesota, whose landscape is as forbidding as that of Lawton, North Dakota. This movie by Joel and Ethan Coen features a murder.
Learn more about The Trail of Broken Treaties, a national movement that took place in 1972 to call attention to American Indian issues including treaty rights and inadequate housing.
A conversation with Sophie Littlefield
1. What drew you to the bleak landscape of the North Dakota oil boom?
Over a year ago, I came across an article in People magazine about the North Dakota “man camps” where rig workers live, most of whom have left families behind in order to come find work. I was drawn to the images of these exhausted, lonely men. I decided that I had to see for myself how the overtaxed town coped with the influx of outsiders, and how the workers found the grit to get up each day and do this dangerous, difficult work.
2. Were you surprised by what you found?
Yes. I was expecting to find corruption and despair in the camps—drugs, alcoholism, grievances parlayed into violence. I had read about the skyrocketing crime statistics and the tensions introduced by the overwhelmingly high ratio of men to women.
What I found instead was a community of men, and a smattering of women, working and living together and making the best of things. They were unfailingly polite, and their greatest asset in coping with their circumstances seemed to be a sense of humor and an atmosphere of respect. I don’t mean to imply that everyone I spoke to was a candidate for sainthood, only that their stories were far more relatable than I had expected.
3. How did the story—two missing boys and the mothers who come to find them—evolve after your visit?
I knew I wanted to write a suspenseful novel where the stakes were intensely personal. I often write about women, especially mothers, and those who care for the young, because a threat to a child’s welfare can turn an ordinary Everywoman into a warrior.
In adding a second missing son and frantic mother, I was able to bring two very different characters together. Forcing the two mothers to interact gave me interesting opportunities to explore a variety of types of tension. I’ve done the protagonist-with-a-sidekick structure several times, but I enjoyed the challenge of having two main characters carry the story.
4. The mothers are very different. Are they drawn from people you know?
I was talking to my agent, Barbara Poelle, not long after I had completed a first draft, trying to hammer out some inconsistencies in Colleen and Shay’s relationship, when she said something that struck a chord: “They’re both you.”
Sometimes it’s hard to see what’s right in front of you. I had worried that I was writing caricatures, extreme examples of the women I knew in my struggling-waitress days in the Midwest and my more recent affluent-housewife days in the suburbs. Instead I was working out the shortcomings and disappointments, the hopes and expectations, that I’d experienced in both worlds. While it’s not germane to the story, I think that in writing these two women and forcing them to work together, I was reconciling two very different parts of my past, figuring out what remains now that I’m no longer in either circumstance.
I’ve been asked which character I like more, and which is the better parent. The truth is that I feel compassion for both of them. Our circumstances give us tools as well as limitations, no matter where we come from.
5. In The Moon Pool you introduce a Native American character and explore the prejudice he and his family experience. You’ve written about race and class before. How does this novel break new ground?
My decision to incorporate this type of prejudice into the plot came from a chance conversation I had with some men over dinner in the “man camp.” We were brainstorming about what might cause a man to go missing from a rig, and they casually mentioned rumors that white men had stumbled onto reservation land to camp or fish, and had been pulled from their trucks and beaten.
I never found anything to substantiate these rumors, but this offhand comment reminded me that racial tension exists in rural America in a way that I don’t often see living in urban Northern California. A Native American who feels exposed in a predominantly white North Dakota town would have a very different experience in a major U.S. city, and as a writer I’m interested in the emotional experience of diversity and prejudice.
6. Could the relationship between Shay and Colleen be described as a friendship? Any lessons here about relationships between adult women?
The most interesting part of writing Shay and Colleen was exploring what it means to depend on another person. They are forced to deal with issues of trust, vulnerability, honesty, and generosity, all in a very compressed time frame. I don’t know how you could help becoming close to someone in those circumstances. But like many intense relationships, the line between gratitude and resentment, love and hate, is a tenuous one.
Extrapolating outward, I would say that middle-aged women are better equipped to handle the turbulence of an intense friendship than younger women in some ways: They’re less apt to take things personally and more willing to take responsibility for their own feelings. Certainly, both Shay and Colleen must draw on their own life experiences to find the courage and patience to work together.
7. What are you writing next?
The book I’m working on takes place closer to home, in a gritty part of Oakland, California, where an out-of-work teacher relocates in order to recover from a terrible loss, only to discover that changing her identity doesn’t keep all of her demons at bay, and that she has more to fear than the crime wave sweeping the neighborhood.
About this Book
North Dakota is like nowhere Colleen has ever seen. Vast rolling plains of silvery snow, studded with shimmering black pools, lit by occasional flares of orange light. It is a landscape both beautiful and terrible. It is the landscape that swallowed her son.
Across town, another mother also searches for her missing boy. He too disappeared from the oilfields where he worked. And no-one—not his employers, not the police—seems to care that he is gone.
As long as they are alone, these two women will never find out the truth. But if they team up, and help each other, then maybe, just maybe, this freezing wilderness will give them back their sons…
Reviews
‘A powerful portrait of grief, fear, and courage as two mothers fight for truth.’
C.J. Lyons
‘Taut and suspenseful, fierce and compelling… doesn’t let up until the last page.’
Jennie Shortridge
‘A powerful story of love and the strength that can be drawn from unexpected places… Told with beauty and heart.’
Michelle Gable
‘With two strong, complicated women at its centre, Sophie Littlefield’s The Moon Pool never lets you go. Utterly original… A remarkable novel.’
Megan Abbott
About the Author
SOPHIE LITTLEFIELD’S novels have won Anthony and RT Book Awards and have been shortlisted for Edgar, Barry, Crimespree, Macavity, and Goodreads Choice Awards. Sophie lives in northern California. This is her UK debut. Visit her website at www.sophielittlefield.com
Also by Sophie Littlefield
House of Glass
Garden of Stones
A Letter from the Publisher
We hope you enjoyed this book. We are an independent publisher dedicated to discovering brilliant books, new authors and great storytelling. Please join us at www.headofzeus.com and become part of our community of book-lovers.
We will keep you up t
o date with our latest books, author blogs, special previews, tempting offers, chances to win signed editions and much more.
If you have any questions, feedback or just want to say hi, please drop us a line on [email protected]
@HoZ_Books
HeadofZeusBooks
The story starts here.
First published in 2014 by Gallery Books, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
First published in the UK in 2014 by Head of Zeus Ltd.
Copyright © Sophie Littlefield, 2014
Jacket design: kid-ethic.com
Author photo: Gigi Pandian
The moral right of Sophie Littlefield to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
This is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
9 7 5 3 1 2 4 6 8
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN (HB) 9781781856840
ISBN (XTPB) 9781781856857
ISBN (E) 9781781856833
Head of Zeus Ltd
Clerkenwell House
45-47 Clerkenwell Green
London EC1R 0HT
www.headofzeus.com
Contents
Cover
Welcome Page
Dedication
Chapter one
Chapter two
Chapter three
Chapter four
Chapter five
Chapter six
Chapter seven
Chapter eight
Chapter nine
Chapter ten
Chapter eleven
Chapter twelve
Chapter thirteen
Chapter fourteen
Chapter fifteen
Chapter sixteen
Chapter seventeen
Chapter eighteen
Chapter nineteen
Chapter twenty
Chapter twenty-one
Chapter twenty-two
Chapter twenty-three
Chapter twenty-four
Chapter twenty-five
Chapter twenty-six
Chapter twenty-seven
Chapter twenty-eight
Chapter twenty-nine
Chapter thirty
Chapter thirty-one
Chapter thirty-two
Chapter thirty-three
Chapter thirty-four
Chapter thirty-five
Chapter thirty-six
Chapter thirty-seven
Chapter thirty-eight
Chapter thirty-nine
Chapter forty
Chapter forty-one
Chapter forty-two
Acknowledgments
Topics and questions for discussion
Enhance your book club
A conversation with Sophie Littlefield
About this Book
Reviews
About the Author
Also by Sophie Littlefield
An Invitation from the Publisher
Copyright
The Moon Pool Page 34